BlogHers Act: Creating an Election '08 Voter Manifesto
Over at BlogHer, cooper and emily invite us to tell the 2008 U.S. Presidential candidates which issues we really want them to address.
Let's create a Voter Manifesto, asking the media and presidential candidates from all parties to answer real questions and address real issues...If you could tell the presidential candidates what is most important to you, what are the top four hot button issues you would ask them to address?
You can join the fun until June 15th by posting your responses on your own blog (tagged BlogHers Act), or submitting a comment on their post.
There are myriad issues I'm eager to hear addressed in candidate speeches. Here are four of them:
- Universal, single-payer health care. Why can an impoverished country like Cuba manage to provide this, and the U.S. cannot? "Because insurance companies would go broke without half-assed government connivance" is not an acceptable answer.
- Global climate change. Yes, it's real, and affects us right here at home. Developing countries/emerging major polluters won't take the Kyoto Protocol seriously until the U.S. does.
- Immigration. How can the United States absorb a casual work force without making legal immigrants feel like chumps for going through the heinous visa process?
- Foreign diplomacy. Note I didn't say "policy." How can the U.S. rejoin the world community, and undo years of catastrophic unilateralism? Why can't we be represented by diplomats, rather than apparatchiks, in critical posts such as embassies and the United Nations?